HEWLETT-PACKARD Co, the world's largest maker of personal computers, plans to lure educators away from Dell Inc with an ultra-portable PC it says is smaller than some textbooks and priced to appeal to schools.

The HP Mini-Note weighing1.19 kilograms has an 8.9-inch (22.60-centimeter) screen and an almost full-size keyboard, Hewlett-Packard said yesterday in a statement obtained by Bloomberg News. Prices start at US$499 for a model with Linux operating software and US$599 with Microsoft Corp's Windows.

Hewlett-Packard, which lags behind Dell and Lenovo Group Ltd in worldwide sales to the education market, gets more than half its PC revenue from notebook machines. Sales to educational buyers totaled 17 million PCs last year, accounting for about 6 percent of all machines shipped, researcher IDC said.

"There's been a lot of focus on lower-priced notebook PCs, and this will be coming in for a lot less than we've typically seen for ultra-portable PCs," which start at US$1,000 with a 10-inch or 12-inch screen, said Ross Rubin, an analyst in New York for NPD Group Inc.

Hewlett-Packard spent a year designing the Mini and tapped educators for ideas on what would win them over, said Dan Forlenza, head of the business notebook group. The one-inch-thick Mini has a scratch-resistant display, a keyboard that is about 92 percent as large as a full-sized keyboard, a built-in hard drive and an optional camera. The standard battery lasts about two hours.

It also has an aluminum chassis, which makes the Mini more durable than rivals such as the plastic-encased Eee ultra-portable from Asustek Computer Inc, Forlenza said.

Hewlett-Packard shares fell 48 US cents to US$45.92 on Monday in New York Stock Exchange trading.